


with you

by Kalya_Lee



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Epilogue, Fix-It, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 15:54:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18663523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalya_Lee/pseuds/Kalya_Lee
Summary: “The war is over,” says Bucky.“Yeah,” says Steve, and smiles.Bucky and Steve, after the end.





	with you

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the end of Endgame. You know the one.

Sam walks away slowly, looking over his shoulder. He’s holding the shield in his left hand, by the rim and not the straps. Gingerly, awkwardly; it’s big and it’s heavy and its surface is slick, so it’ll take a while. But he’ll get used to it. Bucky knows he will. He knows. He’s been there.

Steve shifts a little when Bucky’s right beside him. He’s still looking out at the water, drinking it in. Greedy like he always has been. Like he hasn’t had his fill of calm things by now.

“Hey,” he says, and Bucky sits.

“Hey,” says Bucky. He breathes slow, sniper breaths, in and out. His hands in his pockets. “You wanna get out of here?”

Steve glances over at him, then back at the water. Bucky doesn’t know what he’s meant to be seeing.

“I’ve got an apartment,” says Steve, getting up. “It’s not far.”

“Of course you do,” says Bucky. “Of course you do.”

***

The apartment is small, large for one person. Big windows, colourful rugs. Art on all the walls. Nothing beige here, no cramped corners filled with dust and pairs of combat boots in straight military lines, no private reference library, no bullet holes. The light’s good in the kitchen. There are flecks of paint on the kitchen table. Bucky imagines Steve painting here, in the mornings, sunlight streaming in, sitting at an easel on the chair Bucky’s sat in now, sat and watching Steve as he puts on a pot of coffee.

Steve moves strong and graceful, but slow, but careful. Combat motions on old bones. Bucky watches, rapt despite himself, watches like he’s watching a miracle. There was no point in his life when he ever thought he’d get to see Steve grow old.

“Alright there, Buck?” says Steve, putting a mug down in front of him. Cream, three sugars. Steve remembers, then. Bucky always took sweetness where he could get it.

Steve sits down. Bucky wraps his hands around the mug; only one of them shakes.

“No,” says Bucky. “I’m furious with you.”

Steve huffs a little, like he expected this, and of course he did. He’s always been an idiot but he’s never been stupid. He gives Bucky a look, _that_ look, that aw-shucks look like he had all the time when they were twelve, when they were young and they were boys and Bucky had kept wanting to punch him in the face.

“You would’ve been my first choice, you know,” says Steve. “It was already yours. I just didn’t think you wanted it.”

“No,” says Bucky, “I didn’t.”

He takes a sip of coffee. It’s sweet, just right. They used to boil old grounds in a pot on the stove. It used to taste like shit. This coffee is good, and he is drinking it here at Steve’s kitchen table, where the light is good for painting, with the big windows. There is something acrid at the back of his throat.

“I told Peggy,” says Steve, into the quiet. “The first day I got back, I told her. About HYDRA. And then I told her again, and again. But the timeline, it – she never remembered. I did try.”

He looks down, then, at his own hands, like he’s finally found something he regrets, and something blooms, vindictive and sharp, in Bucky’s chest.

He says nothing. He didn’t want this. This is not something he wanted.

_“_ I did try,” Steve says, “I even found you once, but you – Buck, you gotta know, if I could’ve changed any of it I –”

“Stop,” says Bucky, “shut up, Steve. Stop. Please.”

Steve stops. He waits. He’s breathing different, now; Bucky can hear it. Quiet, calm. Like the rest of him. He’d had a broken nose, before, a fistfight-crooked nose and asthmatic lungs, and then he’d been – everywhere, running. Leaping off things, hitting them. Breathing hard, now that he could. All their lives it was Bucky who had been still.

Things change. They both know this. Bucky wraps his fingers tighter around the mug.

“I would have stayed,” says Steve, “if you’d asked me to.”

“You,” says Bucky.

He lays his hands flat on the table. He takes a deep breath. Steve is looking at him, like he’s ready to be honest now, like he understands. And of course he does. Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes; they have always understood each other. And this should not be a surprise. Bucky has always known Steve could be cruel.

“You bastard,” says Bucky, “you bastard. Why the hell do you think I didn’t?”

***

“I suppose you want me to go fight crime with Wilson now,” says Bucky. “You know he hates me, right?”

“He doesn’t hate you,” says Steve, firm like always, like he can know for sure. And maybe he can, Bucky wouldn’t know. Steve had always been the one with the good memory.

“No, guess he just resented me for stealing his boyfriend,” says Bucky, and almost smiles at the look on Steve’s face. “Bucky and Cap, together again. Just like old times, huh?”

Steve looks at him again, brow furrowed, studying. Working out angles. Bucky puts his hands in his lap.

“You don’t have to do that,” Steve says, at last, soft and careful, “if you don’t want to. You’ve done so much already. You’re done.”

“The war is over,” says Bucky.

“Yeah,” says Steve, and smiles, beatific, full of quiet joy and kind like Bucky doesn’t know, like he doesn’t know just when he’d become part of the war. “Yeah, it is, Buck. You can do whatever you want now.”

“What I want –” says Bucky, and.

And it’s been a while, and it’s been a while, but for a moment he’s back there again: rough green cotton heavy on his shoulders, hat perched crooked on his head. His best friend beside him and a girl on his arm, going to see the future. What had he wanted. The first day of the rest of his life.   

“I wanted you safe,” he says. “I wanted you well. I wanted you home from the war.”

Steve’s smile goes soft. “Well,” he says, “guess you did get that.”

He’s happy, Bucky knows. It’s right there in his eyes. He’s happy. He’s been happy for a long fucking time.

“Yeah,” says Bucky. “I got it. Everything I ever wanted.”

***

“Was it good?” Bucky asks.

The light is lower now. They’re sitting on the sofa in the living room, side by side, shoulders not quite touching.

“Yeah, Buck,” says Steve. “Yeah, it was.”

Steve holds out his hand, and Bucky takes it. It feels like he’s falling. They still have a little time.

“Okay,” says Bucky, “okay.”


End file.
